American literature

The new poetry

Poetry ranged between traditional types of verse and experimental writing that departed radically from the established forms of the 19th century. Two New England poets, Edwin Arlington Robinson and Robert Frost, who were not noted for technical experimentation, won both critical and popular acclaim in this period. Robinson, whose first book appeared in 1896, did his best work in sonnets, ballad stanzas, and blank verse. In the 1920s he won three Pulitzer Prizes—for his Collected Poems (published 1921), The Man Who Died Twice (1925), and Tristram (1927). Like Robinson, Frost used traditional stanzas and blank verse in volumes such as A Boy’s Will (1913), his first book, and North of Boston (1914), New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), and A Masque of Reason (1945). The best-known poet of his generation, Frost, like Robinson, saw and commented upon the tragic aspects of life in poems such as “Design,” “Directive,” and “Provide, Provide.” Frost memorably crafted the language of common speech into traditional poetic form, with epigrammatic effect.